


Not

by roxymissrose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-13
Updated: 2011-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-20 09:10:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roxymissrose/pseuds/roxymissrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't torture, not really. Not at all like Sam had expected....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not

It wasn't that Sam was tortured by Michael and Lucifer—occasionally Lucifer turned his attention to him, just to assure Sam that he hadn't been happy with the way his sojourn topside ended but it was pique really, not torture. Or at least, not _Torture_ torture.

Michael didn't torture, he…admonished. He scolded, sadly, with no relish, in a way that certainly would have had an angel feeling shame, possibly discomfort…an angel. An angel would have received and withstood Michael's chastising the way a child withstood a scolding from Mother or Father. For a human, corporeal or not, being chastised by an angel was a little like being dandelion fluff in a thunderstorm, kindling in the flames.

It wasn't torture that threaded through every bit of Sam's soul and echoed endlessly in the cage made of infinity, it was being caught in the middle in a way that no one living had ever experienced. A rumble of galactic proportions, a family disagreement older than recorded time and more vicious than anything Alistair or Lilith or Andras or Moloch or anyone could conceive of. Ten thousand million billion worst Thanksgiving dinners wrapped in dysfunctional family get-togethers and marinated in loathing and anger and disappointment and that feeling of betrayal that only family can make feel like being flayed alive. Michael and Lucifer slugged it out to the tune of _Dad liked you best_ and _I hate you_ and _you never loved me_ , and Sam was ground between the two of them like grain between millstones.

Occasionally, when he could draw a breath and the inside of his head was momentarily his own, he felt sorrow for Dean….  


[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/roxymissrose/pic/000ekx0d/)

  
Michael wakes him after some amount of time…"Walk with me."

And they do walk, across a landscape with an endless horizon, while Michael drones on and on and on about infinite love and infinite forgiveness until Sam feels like his ears are bleeding. Michael claims continuously that it's not torture, that he loves Sam because Sam is a creature of God, no matter what horrible, godless things he did in his misguided attempt to help, all hampered by his unreasonably deep love for his brother.

Michael might not think of it as torture but Sam desperately wishes for the Archangel to shut up. He wishes it so hard he could almost puke. The thought distracts him momentarily. Is this thing he's wearing his real body? He feels--his skin peels and chars like overcooked pork, his blood fills his mouth and his lungs like it would topside but he's been here too long and nothing about himself changes:limbs reattach, exploded atoms reassemble, his hair is no longer than it was when he fell and his boots are still pristine—he wants to ask Dean a million times 'was it like this for you, did you wear what you got eaten in for forty years or did you wear yourself at all'--

He wonders if they're really walking or if the landscape is scrolling by. Michael isn't demanding his attention so he drifts, and slowly becomes aware of a low note vibrating in his ear, distracting him further from Michael's lecture. The note climbs, levels off and stays steady. It's as if one word's repeated endlessly until it distorts into meaningless sound. They walk and Sam smells cinnamon. He smells iron and gunpowder. Something huge and spiked roars past overhead, revolving as it goes and showering everything in colors. The sound in Sam's ear warbles like it's being buffeted in the wake of the massive shape. He flinches and Michael reaches out before Sam can beg him not too.

"Oops," Michael smiles as Sam turns inside out and explodes into flames. The flames consume him and then consume the ashes and then consume the steam and then. It shouldn't be possible to be aware of time passing but he does feel it--time passes for him in a void so vast that when he wakes up to pain, it's the most wonderful thing he's ever felt and he wants to cry from the joy of it.

He blinks and nothing has changed. That endless loop of time might have lasted a few seconds, or a few eons. The sound he'd been hearing before he stopped existing is still droning on but the level has dropped. There's a wide red and blue smear in the sky above the eternal plain. Lightning flashes in it; fog boils out of it and is sucked back in…

"What is that?" he asks Michael and Michael gives the smear a thoughtful look and Sam smells cinnamon and vinegar—

"Adam."

"What? No, what it that—" He points at the smear. And then asks quickly, trying not to let it sound like an afterthought, "Where is Adam, where have you been keeping him?" He asks it with a deep sense of shame. He hadn't even thought to ask about his half-brother until this very second. Thoughts of Dean chase and torment him at all times and Adam...never until Michael reminds him.

"That is Adam. At times. At times, he can be the note you hear, or the scent you detect. At times he can be a thin long line wrapping around and around the 'cage', each of his molecules hooked end to end like a chain. It's really very lovely, much more so than this meat box of yours."

Sam hates when Michael or Lucifer let go of their Masks. The reality of them makes his eyes burn and his brain feel like it's trying to spin in his skull. They are so much bigger than the spiky thing that tore the sky, so much more frightening. Louder, brighter….

Sam's nose wrinkles--the smell of cinnamon has changed and now it smells like inside of a body and the smear moves like a slug over the invisible curve of the cage, leaving long streaks of something a little like ectoplasm. The streaks curl behind it and grow into things that fly away.

"Adam's not really here, not as here as you are. I mean," Michael says thoughtfully, "he's almost all the way here but some of him is…" Michael frowns. "In truth, I'm not sure. It's not something I need to know."

"What? What? That's not--that thing isn't Adam—it's not possible."

Michael looks at him out of John Winchester's eyes, and laughs. "Really?"

Sam blinks against the brightness and opens his eyes to a garden in spring and a man in a white suit is sitting across from him. The man smiles, and says, "I'm bored."  


[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/roxymissrose/pic/000ekx0d/)

  
Lucifer was not like Michael at all.

The time Sam spends with Michael is…uncertain. Sometimes he is Sam; sometimes he's a possibility of Sam. Michael finds the meat unattractive and restrictive but remakes Sam in it because he says Sam listens better in it than in any other manifestation. Sam interprets that to mean it hurts more.

Lucifer loves the suit. The time Sam spends with him is fire and ice and endless. Lucifer loves to talk….

"So. I'm bored. And I need you to entertain me while my brother goes off and does…whatever it is he does when he's not trying to convince me of the horrible error of my ways. Did your brother do that? Punish you for stealing cookies? Scold you when you stepped out of line? Tiresome, wasn't it? Don't do this, don’t do that—I imagine he was just full of don'ts."

"Stop." Sam hangs his head. He hates when the Fallen wears Dean's face. Hates when he does that.

"It's this. This is upsetting you, isn’t it?" Fallen asks, and gestures with Dean's hand towards Dean's face. "You have to admit, it's really beautiful. When did you start noticing that?"

"Stop."

"Too many questions? Tell me Sam, when did it change from, 'he's nice to look at' to 'I want to touch'? You could, you know. No one would judge you." Lucifer smiled. "Certainly not I."

"I would. Judge myself," Sam mutters.

"But my Heart, that will never matter; you're here, between the Devil and the deep, forever." The Prince of Lies tilts his head. "You don’t even know what that means, do you? For. Ever. You can't conceive of it, can you? Your tiny, little mind can't hold it. Well, it tastes just a little like this—"

Sam feels galaxies expand under his skin, feels planets come apart against him. Feels an uncountable amount of lives and deaths, tastes their souls pass through him. Beholds all the creations and watches them vanish into time. Forgets who he is, where he came from and what green means and What It All Means and then he's sitting in a garden in spring and a man in a white suit says, "That was fun. Let's do that again."

Lucifer was not like Michael at all.

The Wicked felt things Michael didn't or couldn't, he was unique in that way. He loved his family. He wanted his family to love him back. He was so convinced that they couldn't, he hated them.

There's a thin line between love and hate and you can cross it ten times a day. Sam knows that for the fact it is. He loved his brother and his father and he was capable of hating them almost as much. At the end of the day, love always won out. Wins out.

But for Lucifer….

He reaches down into a lake of fire and pulls Sam up. "Let's play a game," he says, when Sam can breathe again.

Sam notices for the first time the wall around the garden, and then like a ghost appearing, Sam's brother stands in front of him. Sam's joy is tempered by the gun waving in his face. That's…hurtful. But there's a warm, wet, breeze brushing against his skin, a light drizzle caressing his face and the air in his lungs feels good, rich and slightly damp. The grass under his feet is springy and smells like green when he steps on it. It's so good, it's so good and he says Oh god, Dean it's—I'm back, It's me, but his lips say, "This is where we end, Dean. This is the way the story goes."

Lucifer inside says, _Look, Samuel, this is the fun part._

There's a feeling of setting a foot down on popcorn kernels. Sam looks down and Dean's eyes stare up at him, the soul fleeing his cooling meat.

Sam feels Dean's neck roll under the heel of his shoe and then—crack, there's a feeling of stepping on a dry twig. Sam looks down and Dean's eyes stare up at him, the soul fleeing his cooling meat.

Sam feels Dean's neck roll under his shoe, his heel digs in and the flesh gives like a fluid-heavy sponge, thick and slightly slippery, there's resistance he can feel, even through the leather, which gives way to a feeling of stepping on a dry twig. The crack echoes in his ear and his brother's body jerks. Sam looks down and Dean's eyes stare up at him, the soul fleeing his cooling meat.

And it happens repeatedly until the only thing Sam can remember is that he's killed his brother.

He's burning, angel voices making his skin burn and his blood steam out of his eyes. He's on a cross, bleeding. He's in a hospital corridor and his coffee hits the floor, barely spilling a drop. He's watching his brother sleep, wrapped in a too big hoodie and his chest struggling to draw in breath. He's in a kitchen in tract house, and Dean's lying on the floor bleeding. He's on a bed, jacket still on and something warm and thick drops on his forehead….

"Let's play a game."

Fin~2-27-2011


End file.
